


A New First Time

by LustreGuts



Category: Deathgarden (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, Gen, Temporary Character Death, inspired by TRUE INGAME EVENTS ...... SORTA ....... VERY. VERY LOOSELY.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:46:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22642816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LustreGuts/pseuds/LustreGuts
Summary: Switch comforts the new scav Dash as they both lay dying - there's a first time for everything.
Relationships: Su "Switch" Bai & Darius "Dash" Shaw
Kudos: 1





	A New First Time

It's mechanical shrieking, screaming, gunfire and then, all thanks to one unlucky footstep, flying up into the air and tumbling back down, to roll over the side of a ditch and land in a bloody heap. Well, that was a bullshit way to lose the chase. But there's still hope, Switch knows this - even the threat of death has become a routine procedure she knows how to navigate. She evaluates her current situation: a dislocated elbow, a broken organic knee and broken artificial knee with matching ankles, and prosthetic attached by mere threads of connective tissue to a shredded thigh. When she looks down, her entire abdomen is a dark ruddy stain, freshly painted by the hunter's shotgun.

Her first instinct is to call for Sawbones over the comms, but there's no point; Sawbones isn't in this trial. Instead, it's some new kid whose been calling himself Dash whose infiltrated the usual quartet. Switch stays quiet, and keeps still amongst the bushes she fell into, hoping to avoid detection long enough to be rescued. She sees the grim face of the Poacher leer over the top of the ditch briefly, scanning this tiny little ravine, but he doesn't even bother to jump down, instead activating his supercharge and leaping across and beyond, vanishing deep into the other side of the arena. Someone's outline is visible on her HUD in that direction, fleeing from a blood needle. They must have tripped a mine or drone, Switch reasons, and begins the miserable task of dragging herself forward across the cold ground into the open. It's at times like this that she misses her jury-rigged, ruins-made prostheses - unlike the limbs printed and provided by the enclaves, her glorified peg leg and hook don't transmit sensations of cold, or pain. She needs to focus, there's no point in dwelling on what is out of her control, only on what she can accomplish in the current moment. She sees a lot of white, static fuzz mixing with the snowfall in her head, as well as the blue of several power core printers. There is a yellow ammo crate, and far off in the distance at the edge of the arena, that promising red glow - the colour of blood and life. And so, she drags herself, single-limbed, towards survival.

There's a loud rasp when she touches something that pulls back and kicks at her. And there, sprawled in the undergrowth between her and survival, is the new kid. His limbs all look like they're attached for now, and Switch can't see any of his organs, but there is something very wrong with him. His posture is rigid like a silent scream, and his chest isn't moving- no, as Switch pulls herself closer she can see that his bloody chest _is_ moving, in a shallow stutter closer to shaking than breathing. He's making faint gasps behind his flimsy cloth mask, barely louder than the explosive tinnitus lingering in Switch's ears. A cracked rib cage? Or maybe punctured lungs. The specifics don't matter to Switch.

"Dodge! D-no... D... Dash?" Switch fumbles with her tongue, the kid's callsign slipping from her mind. "Dash! Is your head okay?"

By some stupid miracle his sunglasses are unbroken and still strapped around his eyes, but his face is still greatly exposed compared to the typical scavenger masks, and Switch and see him turning his head to look towards her. "M... My head?" His voice is strained and tight at the first words he says, and then he mumbles, "huh-head's fine..."

She doesn't care about him but she is surprised by the relief she feels, now she knows he will be fully repaired later. "Then start crawling."

Dash makes a sound caught between 'where', 'why' and a wheeze, as he rolls from his back onto his side, legs curling up against his chest.

"Do it now. This way." Switch growls through gritted teeth. She doesn't wait any longer because she needs to focus on her own survival, but she does feels some relief when after a couple of meters Dash has managed to match her glacial pace. He's propped up on his knees as he crawls, as opposed to Switch who claws her way forward. If he knew what he was doing he could easily speed past her right now, but she's glad he doesn't seem to know what they're doing. She doesn't want to find out first hand how poor his medical skills are, when they could simply open the health crate together and share the healing cloud of nanomachines between them; Switch doesn't even need the fresh nanomachines specifically, her prosthetic leg already fitted with an impressive personal reservoir, but she needs the health crate's signal to activate the hibernating swarm in her system. And to think Andrus Quintero treats her like an ungrateful nuisance, when he's always putting pointless restrictions on her upgrades! But, that's a problem for outside of the trial. Switch reminds herself that she can spend as much time as she wants imagining up arguments with the technician _after_ she has escaped.

She groans as she drags herself through the undergrowth, trying not to imagine the snail's trail of blood she's left behind her, and she stops moving. Switch can feel her pride crumbling as chilling cold disbelief floods her and darkens her vision. Ahead, a small crawl away, is the red glow of a Blood Pile, the tower of carcasses reaching up the side of the ditch and peaking out from around the base of one of the bridge looming overhead. She pushes forward just a little bit more, holding onto her last vestiges of hope, but she can't see any other traces of the colour red in this part of the arena. "Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck this..." The utterances fall from her mouth like impotent venom. She's fucked.

"W-what?" Dash mutters, in English. He creeps forward on his limbs so he is beside her, looking at the face of her mask. "I... don't kn... wha..." It's too arduous for him to talk; Dash hangs his head down, panting, fighting for his breath, but he still manages to stay on his hands and knees.

Switch looks at him, and looks away. "We're fucked!" She cranes her neck around, staring down the long, straight ditch towards the centre of the arena- where there was no doubt a health crate waiting for her. After getting downed, she had fixated on the first red light she could spot, which had been the vivid red of a fresh, unclaimed Blood Pile. She went the wrong way. She would have to drag her corpse all the way back to where first landed, just to break even on the distance she needs to travel. "FUCK!"

No, no. Not corpse. She's still alive. This situation is what she makes of it, and she isn't dead yet. Switch doesn't cry, she's too sharp and resourceful. She swallows wetly, regaining her level head. There isn't much she can do to mend her current state, but there are still things that she can do to get the best out of it. After shouting and cursing she feels drained of her anger, her clenched fist loosening its grip on her vambrace. She hates having to do what she's about to do, but it's worth a try. She scans around, trying to spot the white outlines of her allies, and she can see them scattered around the garden. Someone else is also down, a stationary blob on the horizon, someone is climbing away from the sound of gunfire, and someone is standing at a blood needle. They're her friends, and she's a fool for getting herself trapped and becoming dependant on them. "We're trapped down here. Someone help us!" No one responds to her. She knows they heard her. One of them will come soon, she's sure, or maybe they'll all die trying - it's too late for Switch to help them if they can't pull their own weight.

She wouldn't be in this mess if Sawbones was here to patch her up, instead of this new scav. But it wasn't the kid's fault either. With little else to do, Switch began to move again, not so much crawling and shuffling towards the undergrowth against the wall, several meter's down from the Blood Pile. She didn't want to sit dying next to a bunch of corpses, even if hers was only going to be a temporary death. It took the last of her energy, but she twisted around, feeling her gut churn in pain, so she was sitting up with her back propped up against the wall. She sighed, thoroughly exhausted, now she can do nothing but rest and wait. Except... Dash was here, watching her, and she laughed out loud, because she imagined a look of confusion on his face.

"Come here."

Dash doesn't move. "W-what..."

"Come sit here." With her one working hand she pats the space next to her, vambrace clattering against the stony wall and frozen ground. "We can keep each other warm while we wait." She doesn't need to say what they're both waiting for.

Dash, unsurprisingly, complies. He crawls over and is mindful as he maneuvers himself, slowly rolling himself over so that he is sat beside her, arms folded against his chest as if he's holding himself together. But somehow he still seems lost, which Switch is surprised that she can notice. "I... I used to watch you."

What? _"What?"_

"You were one of... fth.. my favourites..." The boy's words come in messy gasps and exhales, and Switch can practically hear the internal bleeding happening inside of him. "Livestream..." He states, staring straight into her patchwork eyes.

Oh. Of course. It was so easy to forget that the trials were broadcast globally, when you spent so much time on the inside of the complex. This isn't a situation Switch has ever found herself in before, and she doesn't know how to feel. Embarrassed, or flattered, perhaps? It doesn't make a difference how she feels about it, or how she responds, so she takes the fun and jovial approach when she responds by lightly teasing him. "So how does it feel, meeting a star? Am I as perfect as you imagined me, or even better?"

Dash makes some nasally hisses, but quickly doubles over in agony. Switch hopes the amusement was worth the pain of his laughter. The sound reminds her of her mom's laughter, long after toxic nanoparticles had turned her lungs into inflamed mush. He's so young. She remembers seeing him in the main lobby as he ran laps around the empty space, and how restlessly he bounced around before this trial began, in between pestering the others scavengers, talking on end about how excited he was, and how ready he was, how he dreamed of this. He's too young to sound as ruined as her mom had before she died.

And now he's dying just like her, with her.

"Hey... kid, listen," She begins, trying to figure out what she wants to say. She feels... weirdly vulnerable, and almost guilty. Switch knows she has absolutely no reason to feel that way, but she knows she needs to say something. "So I was only half listening, but you said something about... wanting to be here? In the Bloodharvest, that you wanted to be here. Was that right?"

He makes an wheezing sound, but more communicative is how quickly he nods his head in affirmation when she says this, as if his eagerness allows him to forget his pain for a brief moment.

"That's good. That's really good! Hey, scoot closer for a moment." Switch reaches out her hand and she feels bad when her vambrace knocks into his ribs, causing a visible shudder to ripple through him, but he shuffles against her anyway, and she pulls him against her with as much strength as she can manage, so that his warmth is leaning against her in a one-armed embrace. The top of his head rests against her mask; she doubts its uncomfortable enough for him to cares. "I doubt you've realised this yet, but that makes you one of the best people here."

She can't see it out of the corner of her fuzzy vision but she can feel it, when he tries to turn and look at her directly; she holds him close, and explains.

"So many people... they come here, and they voluntarily choose to, but they don't want to be here at all. They're so focused on where they think they're supposed to be in the world, that they give up control of their own lives. But we're different."

"Watching... run cir...cles... around..." He rasps into the cold air, and he shudders in a painful, silent laugh.

Switch chuckles too, weak but heartfelt. It warms her up. "Yeah. See? You get where I'm going with this. The Hunters think they're so powerful, that they're above us scavs. But we're human, and so are they. The Hunter's are weak because they can't accept they're only human, and it humiliates them when you remind them of that. And being human, and knowing that we're human, is what makes us strong."

She's not even sure what she's trying to say, but she's saying it. She might be saying something true. If Dash wants an accurate sociology lecture he can ask any of the other scavengers, whose heads are filled with all sorts of pointless thoughts; Switch only cares about getting through her own life, and soothing a dying boy. Her hand is just a numb appendage on her arm, but she feels, just barely, Dash's own burning hot hand close around it. She tries her best to squeeze his hand back. She can't tell if she manages to.

"We... want to be here. We're in charge of our own lives, kid. We can't change the world, but our fate is what _we_ make of it... Okay? Remember that. This trial ended badly, but after this... We can do better. We're going to do better. You going to do better, Dash. You're going to do great."

He doesn't answer her. She no longer feels cold at all. She wants to continue, but there's no where to go from here. She's surrounded by a dizzying stillness, which fills and consumes the heavy rag doll that is her body.

\-------------

"F-F...?"

"Good, you're still alive! I've got you, kid. Stay still, this will be quick."

...

"I... Thanks, man. ...W-wait, what about Swi-"

"Too late. The nanomachines can get you back on your feet, but it's too late once you're already dead. Now get moving, kid."

"I... But she..."

"Was her head injured?"

"No, I don't-"

"Then they'll fix her later. We don't have much time left, we need to MOVE!"

\---------------

A lecture from Andrus Quintero was Switch's favourite thing to wake up to.

...Well, okay, that wasn't true at all. She resented how he talked down to her, and talked back to her backtalk. But she couldn't deny the tidal wave of sheer _relief_ she felt when she woke up enough to realise that she was _alive._ She kept her mouth closed long enough to be dismissed and rolled off the surgery table with her full set of fully functional limbs, slinking out of his little surgery cave with a skip in her step. Hanging around outside is Inked, and Ghost, and talking to Fog is the new kid who immediately stops when he notices her approach.

"We made it. All of us," Dash says. His voice sounds strange to hear, now that he can speak clearly without battling for every shallow breath. But being able to physically speak doesn't stop Switch from detecting some hesitation and difficulty, as he starts to speak and then trails off, "all of us, except for..."

Aww, poor kid. He sounded so guilty over nothing. He may have watched countless hours of the Bloodharvest, and had even likely seen her die on the livestream broadcast before, but that wouldn't have made his first time experiencing the real deal any easier. Switch holds both of her arms open, and grins behind her mask when Dash throws himself forward, hugging her tight.

" _All_ four of you survived? See, I told you, you're gonna be great here, kid!"

**Author's Note:**

> and then dash did such a great job he helped kill the fuckinbg game, nice one mate
> 
> NAH I JOKE i mean except only kinda haha. writing this was fun and ready a bunch of his lore made me like dash a LOT more but im still gonna execute the plenum-tubes-running lil git whenever i catch him lmao. if your a plenum-tubes-running lil git get fuckin READY
> 
> rip dg:bh i guess? idk mean i mean I'm still playing and I'm gonna keep playing til servers closes, and I'm also gonna finish all my unfinished (🌈) fanfic projects for it too, i have a few im gonna clean up still even if servers go down so thats gonna be fun uwu


End file.
